Until I Break
by yatagarasuoh
Summary: Now that they've become mindless machines without use, the little bits of them are falling—apart. [slight!Eruri&Riveren]


**Until I Break**

* * *

The thrill of the battle is being the battle. It's when Rivaille is so far immersed into it that his veins are the crack of wires through air and the grind of his teeth is knife on flesh. The blood is hot and boiling just under the confines of his skin, hissing with every swing of his arms and crush of rubble under heel. From a distance, Irvin thinks that exhilaration would taste like the determination in Rivaille's piercing gaze, bloodlust would feel like the skim of calloused fingertips up his arms.

This is where Rivaille belongs. Irvin can see it in the way that green flashes through the sky and backs break into shattered lines of defeat and gleaming curves of victory, reflected off stained metal, sinking into frail bones. He knows that the world follows the little corporal wherever he goes. Death trickles from his fingertips and his footprints bloom with something akin to second chances. Battle is Rivaille's very blood and soul.

But now that everything is over and nothing has begun, Irvin sees narrow shoulders hunching forward and eyes blackening to the darkest shade of shadows. The juncture where wings meet and chains end has started to wither and fall apart with rotting pieces of dreams dreamed and limits defined. He tries to stop it with his trembling hands, but maybe Rivaille wants it to happen. Instead of giving in to Irvin's pleas, he glares at Irvin with his soulless eyes and quivers in the wind of empty voices and promises kept. Or maybe broken.

There's no way that a beautiful creature made from battle itself can survive without the clangor of blades and cries of death. No matter what Irvin does, no matter what he tells himself, there is nothing to be done about a lost soul. Not when it's been left behind to be trodden on with the silk petals of white flowers.

Now that the world has stopped spinning, maybe he will succumb to the stillness, too.

* * *

The titan boy is kept under lock and key underground now. His purpose of serving in the war against inhumanity, as the military police had said, was fulfilled and there was no longer any need for him. Irvin has tried to plead to the brass in hopes that one of their own heroes would at least be able to fly freely, but ears have been shut and hearts have been hardened. Victory may have brought relief to mankind, but it has also brought overwhelming cockiness and confidence into the heads of the officials.

The first time Irvin catches Rivaille sneaking into the boy's cell, he doesn't say anything. Instead he watches with stinging eyes and he tries to ignore the weight of the medal pressing down on his chest. It's more of a noose than anything; he can't breathe with the responsibility crushing his spine and curling down his throat like pricks of fire. He has to school his expression into one of faint disinterest. Irvin knows that Rivaille can see straight through his mask, though, because a shy smile is offered his way. And that's all it takes for the weight to be lifted off his shoulders. It's not even a full smile, but the fact that Rivaille would look at him in such a manner has his fists clenching, nails digging grooves of crescent into his palm.

He really should've known that the smile was something more like a meek apology, a one-time thing that keeps his heart yearning for more. Because after all, Rivaille is breaking down. They all are. It should be expected that they fall apart not from the knives through their necks, but from the brush of fingers over frail hearts. Because that's how humans have always worked. Their minds decompose long before their bodies.

* * *

Many times during the middle of the night, Irvin will wake up in cold sweat, blinding images of mindless grins and snapping bodies staining the back of his eyelids. It's post-traumatic stress, the doctors have told him. It's why most returning soldiers die despite having survived the physical battle. Their hearts just aren't prepared for the strain of living on when their soul has been left behind on the battlefield. His pulse is loud in his ears, like a beat of drum that he can't shake off wherever he goes.

But Irvin is not a battle creature. He is someone who calculates from the sidelines and enters the fray only because he has to. His soul is still inside of him, burning the barriers between flesh and heart wounds, but still there. Just a glance at Rivaille's figure can tell him what he needs to know, that the former corporal has restless nights where fingers grasp at empty sheets, legs kicking at the air where feet used to tread. There is no need for any of them to fly anymore, and with rewards they are given the honor of being caged birds.

Sometimes when Irvin sees Rivaille, he will run his fingers up the lines of the shorter man's uniform. Not to gain attention, but to tie the seams together where Rivaille seems to be falling apart. Every time eyes look up at him, they grow emptier each time, light fading off into trembling shadows. He doesn't know what hurts more, the fact that he has to watch everything disappear from him or the fact that he can't do anything about it.

He gives up on counting the time that Rivaille sneaks off to see the titan boy. It's better not knowing exactly how many times they've been together and how much time passes through their intertwined fingers.

"It's not what you think, Chief," Yeager tells him when Irvin is sent down to monitor the boy for a little while. "It really isn't what you think. There's nothing going on between us."

"Did Rivaille tell you that?" And he sounds bitter. It's the taste of bread gone bad and hopes acidified into regret. Irvin almost doesn't recognize his voice with that way that it sounds so desperate, so fragile. "If it's nothing, then tell me why he's always breaking down every time I see him. Tell me why the days when he was the battle and I was the commander no longer exist. Why did things have to change this way? The world is happier, but why aren't we?"

The answer to that is obvious, of course. It's because they are the ones who take the world's burdens onto their frail shoulders and leave their own dangling from their necks like treacherous ropes and chains. In war their bodies are wrung dry of blood from destruction and their souls drag on the ground. No one knows how to relinquish the hold that has them padlocked into place anymore. They're drowning, Irvin thinks, drowning in their hopes and dreams that have all too soon become reality.

Now that they've become mindless machines without use, the little bits of them are falling—apart.

* * *

And Irvin, who has known only how to live in the moment, finds himself slipping away in the steadfast stream of his time's end.

* * *

fin.


End file.
